New Bad Guy Details for Iron Man 3

Slightly spoilery but not confirmed by Marvel so maybe not. Hit the jump to take a peek at what might be happening in Iron Man 3.

Iron Man 3 is currently filming in Wilmington, North Carolina and there’s some interesting news coming out about the villains Tony Stark and his armored alter-ego will be facing. Since Marvel Studios hasn’t confirmed the following information, you might want to leave it in the box labeled ‘Rumor,’ but I think there’s a solid chance that the info will be dumped into the ‘Real’ file before IM3 hits the big screen.

Mandarin has been popping up almost as long as the third film in the Iron Man franchise has been in the planning stages, and that little nugget of knowledge seemed to gain a little weight when Ben Kingsley landed a villain role in the upcoming movie… because you couldn’t ask for a better real-life representation of the character than Kingsley. Marvel continues to deny that Mandarin is the villain, and they might actually be telling the truth, in a sort of sidestepping kind of way.

Guy Pearce, who portrays Aldrich Killian, is reportedly the main bad guy, with the character inventing Extremis and forming and Extremis army. We’ve been hearing for a while that Iron Man 3 would be based on the Extremis storyline that took place in the Iron Man comics so this isn’t a big shock.

However, it’s also been reported that Kingsley is indeed the Mandarin, although as more of a side character than a main baddie. Why introduce such an iconic figure and then have him stay in the background? Could it be Marvel’s way of introducing the bad guy for The Avengers 2?